Lately, there's a lot of consternation about declining birth rates around the world.

In the U.S., anxieties around what a future with far fewer babies could look like seems to be fueling anger at women who

don't have children. J.D. Vance laments childless cat ladies in leadership positions. Arkansas

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that without biological children to care for, Kamala Harris

doesn't have anything keeping her humble. The underlying assumption seems to be that women who have passed

beyond childbearing age without producing a baby must be disconnected from the realities of

working families or simply too selfish to make the sacrifices required for parenthood. But what about

all the people who desperately wanted to be mothers but never got the chance. From KERA in Dallas, this is

Think. I'm Chris Boyd. Mathematician and writer Eugenia Chen is the former everyday math

columnist for the Wall Street Journal, which published her essay, I am childless, but not by choice.

It's a candid reflection on her long-held dreams of motherhood and the fact that regardless of how it might look to outsiders, her very successful career has very little to do with why at the age of 48 she is not a parent today.

Eugenia, welcome back to think.

Thank you so much for having me.

You offer no criticism of women who don't want children of their own,

but you very much did want to be a mother. What sort of life did you imagine for yourself?

I always imagined that I would have children and also have a job that enabled me to support my children.

I was brought up to believe that I should not be dependent on a man for support and that I should

contribute to the support of my family.

And it was really for that reason that I wanted to have a job and as good a job as I could get

for the safety and security of my family,

just like my mother did. My mother set an example of getting a good job to work alongside my

father to support her family. And that's what I always worked for and imagined I would do.

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